HydrogenAudio

Guidelines for testing:

You can generate test tones in Cool Edit (or any other suitable program), and listen to them via your sound card and audio set-up. Alternatively, you can use the sweep and suggestions here:

http://ff123.net/sweep.html (http://ff123.net/sweep.html)


If you choose to generate your own tones, it's best to use a 48kHz sampling rate for most sound cards. You can select the sample rate after clicking "New" in Cool Edit.

I'd suggest you try a 1kHz tone first, set the volume as loud as you can stand it (without causing distortion in your equpiment). Once set, don't change the volume.

Use decent audio equipment if you can, but even if you can't, please try this anyway, because I'm interest in how many people can hear high frequencies with the audio equpiment they have - this isn't just for golden ears and audiophiles! If you're using speakers, it may help to move your head around a little.

As you increase the frequency, you should still be able to hear a tone, only higher. It can sound quite strange as it goes beyond the limit of your hearing - kind of a sense of there being something there, but then this vanishes as you move the frequency even higher. This is normal. However, if you start to hear increased noise, or a tone getting lower in pitch as you increase the frequency, then your audio equpiment may be doing strange things, and you are not really getting any high frequencies out at all! So, if this happens, don't respond! (Otherwise you could say you heard something at 50kHz!)


If you find that the highest frequency you can hear is 19.5kHz, then you should respond 19kHz (because that's the highest frequency in that list that you would be able to hear).

If you find that the highest frequency you can hear is 23kHz, then you should respond 22kHz (for the same reason).


As always, comments would be great too - what equipment are you using, were you surprised by the result, do you think this is a stupid test etc etc!


Cheers,
David.

P.S. - I have a good friend who can only hear 5kHz, so don't be ashamed, whatever your answer!

I don't bother doing the test.
The last time I tried it the pitch went lower when I reached 19kHz or something like that... 
Too bad I would really like to know.

19 kHz, but I'm quite sure its due to my cheap equipment !

I reached just over 19 khz before I couldn't hear the tone. My equipment: Stereo-Link SL1200, Panasonic RP-HT355 headphones. With my speakers (Klipsch ProMedia 2.1), I can't hear anything above 17 khz. If you're looking for age statistics, I'm 19 years old.

22khz

I can hear the complete sweep.wav on my equipment and don't have CoolEdit to do more sophisticated tests.

<edit>
Age: 16
</edit>

dev0

Wow. That was weird. When going up above 16kHz my SB Live started playing tones like in a melody when increasing the pitch further. Almost like Jingle Bells, but not quite... So I vote "null".

I've voted 20 kHz, but I can hear nearly the complete file... only the last half second or so I hear nothing
Maybe 21 kHz?!
I've no CoolEdit to make further tests...

My equipment is a Yamaha YMF744B based soundcard (Guillemot Maxi Sound Gamer if I remember right) connected via line out (analog) to my Technics SU-A808 with Canton speakers

18 kHz, but I am getting older... 27 years now
I was able to hear 20 kHz at age 18.

I already did the sweeptest once, could hear a little bit over 18 kHz (about 18.5 kHz).

Age: 30

Left ear hears to 15.4kHz, right ear to 15.7kHz. But I can "feel" the sound in my right ear to just over 16kHz, so I voted 16. I used Sound Forge to generate tones in a 48kHz-sampling-rate file: a few seconds of tone, then 1/2 second fade to silence, then a few seconds of digital silence. I could feel the transition from tone to silence in my right ear, but not my left.

Equipment: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Sony MDR-V6 headphones.

Age: 19

17Khz but crappy equipment: buillt-in ESS Maestro 2E in my portable, and Koss Portapro headphones. I'm not sure how high frequences the soundcard can reproduce. In the >18 Khz area it is producing clicks.
Age: 29

Edit: Sorry, voted "null" by mistake

I with lots of patience and absolut silence can ear @ 22Hz, but i can't ear nothing from more or less 19hz to 21.89hz, but from there i ear something until 23.20hz. 22 years

I used to think that I could only hear to 16-17KHz or so. But then I discovered a problem with my testing equipment.

I discovered that the frequency response on my Sennheiser HD-600s are hardly flat above 5KHz. Look at the graph. (http://headroom.headphone.com/graph.php?graphID=86) 16KHz+ signals look like they are shoved down 10, 15, 20dB. If I "can't" hear very high frequency signals, are my ears to blame or can I attribute that to my headphones? I don't have the answer because I cannot verify the accuracy of the graph. But the graph is from Headroom, who is a popular retailer of headphone products.

It depends heavily on the quality of your equipment.I can hear a Cool Edit Pro frequency sweep until 17.5KHz but with extremely lousy speakers (if you look at them from the audiophile point of view).They are Creative speakers that came with my Creative Multimedia Kit (from 1996!).Better than the average comp speakers but still lousy.

I also have an old amp with big speakers (Phillips , from the 70's!) hooked to my line out , they cut off at about 12-13KHz , really crappy.

I'm 26
Never went to a disco until I was 21 (most discos kill your ears!)
Never went to a gig until Metallica came over here.I was pretty close to the stage.If I ever had some "golden hearing" abilities , that evening ruined it all , a definitely deafening experience >_<

i dunno what it is (no sound card on this computer to test with.... when i get to one, i'll vote), but when i was at my parent's house this past winter, i couldn't abx a 15 kHz lowpass, so....

P.S. - I have a good friend who can only hear 5kHz, so don't be ashamed, whatever your answer!

On the bright side, he could never have heard my ex-wife  .  OTOH, I would think that if your upper frequency threshold is 5kHz (while it's certainly not a question of being ashamed of anything), it is at least suggestive of a possible medical condition.  If I couldn't hear above 12-14 kHz on one of these tests, I would see an audiologist and maybe an ENT and figure out why...

I'm 38, and I can hear test tones up to ~18 kHz.  However, I can't consistently ABX music with a lowpass of 15 kHz from the original or passages with higher lowpass.  I've tried it several times using the "Mustang Sally" clips at http://ff123.net/samples.html (http://ff123.net/samples.html) and I've successfully ABX'd it in two out of about five times.

I'm not convinced it matters much... most musical content is in the midrange, or upper bass regions for some types of music.  Provided a person can hear average conversation from a normal distance, they can probably still enjoy music no matter what.

My father has some *serious* hearing loss at age 69... I do feel for him (without a hearing aid conversation is impossible, and you still have to shout a bit even when he's wearing it)... but somehow, he can still enjoy music!  Granted, anything better than a $50 AM/FM radio is overkill, but he doesn't complain.

I don't know what is my ability, I didn't test myself...
But I heard, that a man can only hear frequencies under 8000Hz (due to one source), and 12000 due to another...

I can hear "normally" up to 18 KHz, and up to 18.5 KHz at very high levels. I'd say that over 16-17 KHz you do not "hear" the tones, but instead "feel" something nasty, that hurts, like a blade, in your head.

To people that hear up to 22 KHz: do you feel this, or other things? If you don't feel this, maybe you're just hearing aliasing or distortion from your soundcard/speakers.

About the sweep.wav test, I'd better generate isolated short tones with begining and end quickly faded in and out, because in a sweep at these frequencies it is very easy that due to continuous high frequencies and levels your ear "saturates", and hear tones or things that are not present in the signal, or the opposite, that with the ear "saturated" you are temporarily less sensitive to high frequencies, and/or these false tones mask what you can really hear.

I just made a quick test with the sweep through my cheapo noname sound card and Grado SR60 headphones, and was able to hear up to just under 19 kHz.

Age: 29

Quote

P.S. - I have a good friend who can only hear 5kHz, so don't be ashamed, whatever your answer!

On the bright side, he could never have heard my ex-wife  .

LOL!!!

But seriously - he's 65 - I think it's OK at his age - though I know some people this age can hear up to 12kHz. There's an interesting paper that suggests childhood ear-infections, in combination with noise exposure, contribute to hearing loss. The damage is multiplied if you have both.

I can hear "normally" up to 18 KHz, and up to 18.5 KHz at very high levels. I'd say that over 16-17 KHz you do not "hear" the tones, but instead "feel" something nasty, that hurts, like a blade, in your head.

This describes the experience at the edge of my hearing (15-17kHz) very well.


I find these results very interesting (I hope others do too - please vote if you haven't already!) - we know the mp3 designers assumed that anything over 16kHz was unimportant (Brandenburg - "mp3 and AAC explained" - see the www.mp3-tech.org (http://www.mp3-tech.org) developers papers archives). In my experience, if you can hear up to x kHz, then you will be happy with an x-2 kHz low pass (approximately), but no lower. This is only a guess, but it suggests that many of the people voting in this poll would not be happy with mp3 for this reason (maybe in addition to other reasons!).


Also, it suggests that DVD-audio or SACD would provide no advantages in terms of extended frequency response (at least for pure tones) in the spectral domain for anyone here using their existing audio equpiment. If there is an audible advantage, it must be for some other reason (e.g. imagined, improved temporal resolution, less distortion below 20kHz etc etc - insert your favourite theory here!).


Finally, the results are interesting, because they don't fit with general assumptions that you can read in many textbooks. Though the idea is quite dated, 16kHz is still often quoted as the typical limit of human hearing (20kHZ when very young). Either we're all very young here, or very gifted!


If you have any friends who might be interested, please point them to this poll - I wonder if they are "gifted" too?!


Cheers,
David.
http://www.David.Robinson.org/ (http://www.David.Robinson.org/)

I can hear just up to 19khz, which is pretty good, considering I am 24, and have been dj'ing at least 2 nights a week for the last 7 years! And out clubbing probably at least another 1.

Waffle:
I did worry about my hearing, but after having tests that showed only a slight decrease after 8khz, it was deemed comparable to anyone of my age, which is good news.

My mum, on the other hand, who has never been to a concert, and very rarely sat in loud pubs / clubs can't hear past 11khz (she is 50).

I was thinking of buying some earplugs for the long term safety of my tympanic membranes, but this has encouraged me to listen to loud music even more, as opposed to cutting back -- may as well make the most use of my ears whilst they still function well 

Although I do eat oodles of vitamin tablets, and plenty of Ginseng / Ginkgo... Rumours are these things slow the process of hearing degeneration.

Speaking to someone else about this, he said he had found a statistic somewhere that for every year a person lives in London, 400hz comes off the top of his hearing range (due to the constant noise).... Although this would mean that everyone would be deaf after 5 decades, so obviously is not quite right, it is good food for thought. B)

I'd like to point that we might not be representative of the population.
It is likely that most of us are protecting hearing better than other people:
We try to avoid loud music, and if we have to go in a noisy place, we try to go out often in order to have breaks.
Some of us might even be using ear protection in noisy places.

Once you have done this test, try doing it again with music playing at the same time

...and indeed, wa are all *very* young  B)

I discovered that the frequency response on my Sennheiser HD-600s are hardly flat above 5KHz.

This graph is not the frequency response of your headphones, so don't worry.

http://headroom.headphone.com/layout.php?t...&subTopicID=122 (http://headroom.headphone.com/layout.php?topicID=121&subTopicID=122)

we took what are, in our opinions, the ten best sounding headphones, measured them, averaged the data all together, and used that composite data as the ideal headphone against which all individual headphone data is compared. Thus when you see a frequency response graph on a headphone product page, what you are actually viewing is how that particular headphone's frequency response differs from an ideal headphone

16 kHz is still my upper limit (41 yrs old now) using sweep.wav.  It doesn't matter to me if I use expensive Grado SR325 headphones or cheap Labtec computer speakers for this test.  I can hear the distortion from the computer speakers in the very highest range (> 20 kHz), but that's well beyond when I really stop hearing the sweep.

ff123

16 kHz is still my upper limit (41 yrs old now) using sweep.wav.  It doesn't matter to me if I use expensive Grado SR325 headphones or cheap Labtec computer speakers for this test.  I can hear the distortion from the computer speakers in the very highest range (> 20 kHz), but that's well beyond when I really stop hearing the sweep.

ff123

I'm surprised that cheap Labtec speakers can even reproduce 16KHz!   

I didn't find that sweep.wav very helpful to determine the highest frequency I could here (when I tried it quite awhile ago).  Right about at the point where I stopped hearing the tone, I started hearing the distortion (harmonics?) so I couldn't tell if the harmonics were covering up further HF that I might have been able to hear, or what.  Maybe if I had a better sound card...

16 kHz is still my upper limit (41 yrs old now)

I used separate tones in 250 Hz steps, and could hear upto 15500 Hz fine. After that I just heard a "click" at the begining and the end of a test tone.
So I had to answer 14 kHz  .  But I'm 3 years older
I just hope it's the equipment
--
Ge

19.1 kHz, 21yrs old. :-)

According to the sweep.wav it's something like 18kHz (Will test it later more carefully).

Some months ago I thought my hearing was excellent when I heard all the way up to 22kHz. But then I upgraded my soundcard. The old on-board card just made some strange (high) noises and I thought it was the 22kHz tone but now there's silence.

I don't think my equipment can properly play back the sweep.. I think I was able to hear it up to about 3 seconds, which is 15.4kHz .. I'm 17.. my hearing has got to be better than that. 

where can i download the sweep from?

http://ff123.net/samples/sweep.zip (http://ff123.net/samples/sweep.zip)

19.5 almost exactly, so I put 20.

 up to 17 crappy kHz, and no more. (Even so, I'll continue using my MPC -quality 8.5 switch)
Maybe is my hearing or maybe my equipment.....I'm 18.
I own a SbLive 5.1 (well known by its horrible hypertreble response [16+kHz] )and Creative FourPointSurround FPS 1000 speakers...
As I used the tone at full volume, I vote NULL at all, because the SbLive adds horrible downpitching and artifacts over the 17kHz range so I can't do this test properly.

Quote

I discovered that the frequency response on my Sennheiser HD-600s are hardly flat above 5KHz.

This graph is not the frequency response of your headphones, so don't worry.

http://headroom.headphone.com/layout.php?t...&subTopicID=122 (http://headroom.headphone.com/layout.php?topicID=121&subTopicID=122)

Quote

we took what are, in our opinions, the ten best sounding headphones, measured them, averaged the data all together, and used that composite data as the ideal headphone against which all individual headphone data is compared. Thus when you see a frequency response graph on a headphone product page, what you are actually viewing is how that particular headphone's frequency response differs from an ideal headphone

Even if the graph does not reflect the response of my HD600 absolutely, it reflects their response relatively (to Headroom's "ideal"). They shelve down the upper frequencies. Obviously this is not a problem at an application level because few people will deny that the 600 is one of the finest pair of cans you can buy.

Full sweep.wav on HD-600 and SBLive! and in Winamp volume 20%...
Also I can't watch conventional CRT tvs, since in 10 min I have  a headache, thanks god we own projection as well and I can't hear it...
Also I can hear mutted TV 10-15 meters away if it is on: useful feature when someone forgets to switch off tv in a house and we are going out...
I'm 22 (almost 23)...
Am I the only one who can't listen to classical music cds (in HD-600) since I can hear every single whisper and breath of the musitians... though, I usually stop noticing this if I do something else in addition to listening to the music...

i have just listened to the sweep and im not quite sure what im hearing / listening for.  i can hear tones througout the duration of the clip, but i dont believe that what im hearing is the tone from the frequency its supposed to be.  if i try to follow the tone from the beginning i find it very hard to distingish amongst these other tones at about 4:00 seconds.  can anyone tell me what these other tones are that i am hearing?

Around 18-18.5 kHz (not sure of the exact value) for that sweep.wav and ~17 kHz for most normal music... So I voted 17 kHz...

(I'm 21 years old by the way...)

Almost 19 KHz. Age: 23, soundcard: Hercules GTXP, Headphones: AKG K290.

Soundblaster Live users shouldn't perform this test! That soundcard has a rolloff after 16 KHz, which falsifies the results.

24khz

I can hear the complete sweep.wav and all from http://www.engr.uky.edu/~donohue/audio/fsear.html (http://www.engr.uky.edu/~donohue/audio/fsear.html)


age: 19

headphones philips SBC HP150

16.5 kHz @ age 35.....    I guess that seems pretty normal based on what I'm reading.  Enjoy your hearing while you can kids.

Daffy

If you guys are using consumer soundcards to do these tests, I'm sure a lot of "higher frequencies" you are hearing are actually lower harmonics..

Those  Philips SBC HP150 are only rated to 22khz.. not to knock on you or anything, but I really highly doubt you were hearing 24khz..

Sound Blaster Live! or Audigy owners can participate if they resample the sweep to 48kHz. Otherwise their sound cards will convert it for them and there is constant aliasing noises in lower frequencies.
I recorded the output of my Audigy with Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, you can download the output here (http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/audigy.flac).

I can hear 12khz, but it is noticably lower in level.  I can hear nothing higher.  I am 56.

Soundblaster Live users shouldn't perform this test! That soundcard has a rolloff after 16 KHz, which falsifies the results.

tnx for pointing this out, my results were 16.5 khz with that card, i retested later on pro genelec boxes playing the sweep from some video editing app, the result is close to 19 khz (~18.7).
 

i hate this card more and more everyday...

I could hear the sweep.wav up to something like 18 or 19 kHz, but from that point on, the pitch went down and the soundcard made weird noises (which somehow remind me of the intro to Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" ). So I voted NULL. My cutoff can't be as low as that (I hope).

Age: 16
Equipment (laugh if you want to): Terratec 128i PCI, cheap'n'nasty, half-broken 20€ Vivanco headphones.

CU

Dominic

It seems many people is experiencing aliases. You should burn the sweep on a CD and play it in a CD player.

It seems many people is experiencing aliases. You should burn the sweep on a CD and play it in a CD player.

Doesn't seem worth a CD, altho I have some throwaway (cheap) CD-R's and could try it... but there's no guarantee that all CD players will reproduce the highest frequencies accurately either (especially cheap ones).

When I was 9 or 10 my hearing was tested (firecracker went off next to my ear resulting in temporary deafness and concern about hearing) and I believe I could hear up to 22KHz.  Likely that's diminished by now to about the standard late 30's age hearing (16-17KHz).  Lots of loud concerts between age 15 and 18 probably did no good at all. 

Here's the spectrum of the recording of Case. That's more or less what he majority of people are listening to in their soundcards :

(http://pageperso.aol.fr/lyonpio2001/pictures/sweep/audigy.jpg)

But the description of some people (frequencies going down) match rather the Resampling in SoundForge, quality1, antialias :

(http://pageperso.aol.fr/lyonpio2001/pictures/sweep/quality1.jpg)

In the control panel, go to multimedia/audio/advanced properties/sample rate conversion quality, and set it to "best" if you don't want to get the above.

The original is

(http://pageperso.aol.fr/lyonpio2001/pictures/sweep/original.jpg)

there's no guarantee that all CD players will reproduce the highest frequencies accurately either

Maybe, but they won't play low frequencies instead of high ones, like all AC97 soundcards seem to do.

I don't know what I've learned more about in this thread: human hearing, or average sound cards.

It is bizarre (and sad) that we have a general standard on PCs that means that most of the audio from PCs is wrecked in this way.

This thread wasn't intended to be an advert for non-resampling sound cards, but that's how it's worked out!

Thanks to everyone who voted and posted (you still can if you haven't already!).

This raises another issue for tuning audio codecs: if you remove very high frequencies when encoding, the owner of a good sound card may not detect this (because it's beyond the range of their hearing), whereas the owner of a bad sound card may detect it, because the frequencies were being aliased down into the audible range.

I love this board - so much to learn!

Cheers,
David.
http://www.David.Robinson.org/ (http://www.David.Robinson.org/)

what frequency would be at 4.5 seconds?

With all due respect, this poll is about the quality a National Inquirer poll has

You cannot expect to get reliable audiometric test results with unknonwn source, amplification and uncalibrated headphones in a normal noisy environment.

And yes, this may just as well include those of you who use top of the line Sennheiser headphones and 24bit/96kHz soundcards to play back the test tones.

For example, when you think you hear a tone of frequency XX kHz you might just as well be hearing a tone at ( XX - YY ) kHz for all we know. This could be due to intermodulation components caused by your test equipment (source, amp & transducers or a combination of these).

Further, even if you think you can't hear a tone at XX kHz it might be due to A) daily variance, B) improper test setup, C) bad test gear.

So, do not draw any too far fetched conclusions about what humans can hear or what you personally can hear based on this poll or your own bedroom testing (unless you are an audiometric testing trained and you know what you are doing and have access to proper test gear for ultrasonic auditory measurements).

Some of you might also be interested in knowing that there is no widely accepted international standard for hearing tests at beyond 15 kHz. Some experienced practitioners of audiometric testing go as far as to claim that most data about human hearing beyond 11 kHz is suspect and cannot be trusted.

The differences in level of audibility for single tones can cary at least +/-10 dB (Pa/m2 at the tympanic membrane) from day to day with the same test subject. This for high frequencies. That is, the intensity of sound can vary 20 dB and you'll still get the same test results about the audibility of test tones.

So, while this poll and testing may be entertaining and even insightful, do not draw any
serious conclusions from it.

For those seriously interested in the subject, there is an ongoing discussion on the Auditory list about human HF perception, available reliable data (very scarce!) test methodology and possible perceptual mechanism (bone conducted and modulated cochlear excitation is one current theory supported by experiments).

best regards,
Halcyon

PS Do not assume this post to be an argument against high ultrasonic hearing at beyond 22 kHz. Some research data (both psychological and neurological) supports strongly the perception of ultrasonic harmonics even for test subjects who cannot hear single tone ultrasonic test signals. This even appears to influence the enjoyment of musical signals. References available on request (too time consuming to dig them out right now, I don't have them at hand).

I am intesrested, and I request one or two references (as well as the Auditory list URL), if you don't mind 

PS Do not assume this post to be an argument against high ultrasonic hearing at beyond 22 kHz. Some research data (both psychological and neurological) supports strongly the perception of ultrasonic harmonics even for test subjects who cannot hear single tone ultrasonic test signals. This even appears to influence the enjoyment of musical signals. References available on request (too time consuming to dig them out right now, I don't have them at hand).

One such reference currently being debated on rec.audio.high-end is:

http://jn.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/83/6/3548 (http://jn.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/83/6/3548)

ff123

Thank you for the link. I've been wanting to read this article for a long time. Now I'll be able to speak of it saying less misinformation...

Example, I said that the fact that the EEG that appeared with the high frequencies didn't disappear when they are cut proves that it is not related to them. Wrong : the articles say that the EEG appears AND disappears with the high frequencies, but several tens of seconds after them.

It suggests that the difference might be only audible after several tens of seconds. I might try again some blind tests with longer samples. I'll always remember how the first member of that forum I forgot, that is about home studio, recognized the 16 bits truncated from the 16 bits dithered sample in a blind ABX test : with one listening session per day, in the morning ! Several other golden ears failed before him (one or two other succeeded after him, AFAIR).

People need to quit bashing the SB Live series of sound cards  . They make a great choice if you use the SPDIF out for an external reciever. I am pleased with the cards quality, and I cannot tell any difference between the quality of the 44.1khz sweep and the 48khz resampled when using my Kenwood VR-505 reviever (hooked to SPDIF) and AWIA HP-X222 headphones (claimed response to 25khz?) Enought ranting for now...

Sometimes 3 seconds, sometimes 4, in a noisy laptop with the fan kicking in and out once and again, crappy speakers as well... I'm 25, but AFAIK, I'm sure i'll couldn't hear anything above 18KHz. I voted 17KHz.

People need to quit bashing the SB Live series of sound cards   . They make a great choice if you use the SPDIF out for an external reciever. I am pleased with the cards quality, and I cannot tell any difference between the quality of the 44.1khz sweep and the 48khz resampled when using my Kenwood VR-505 reviever (hooked to SPDIF) and AWIA HP-X222 headphones (claimed response to 25khz?) Enought ranting for now...

Bad resampling in these cards occur also using the SPDIF output.

As to differences, It seems that I could tell apart (via ABX) the original the original versus one resampled, played and recorded via SPDIF. Don't have the reference now, but it's here, in the forums.

However, it's strange that you don't hear the effects of bad resampling with the sweep tone, maybe the effect people hear are not due to resampling but due to bad antialias reconstruction filters plus intermodulation in the card?

Thank you for the link. I've been wanting to read this article for a long time. Now I'll be able to speak of it saying less misinformation...

Yes, same as me. It's very interesting, and seems that some of the things I read/remembered were not accurate about this experiment. It seems that the differences are really audible, and at normal listening levels!!

However, IIRC when the people who did this experiment were asked for more data in order to try to duplicate the experiment, they didn' reply.

Anyway, the study looks quite serious, and is worth some home-testing. The pity is that I don't know of any musical long clips sampled at higher frequencies than 44.1/48 HZ to do testing. Anyone?